Filberts, a.k.a. Hazelnuts

The word noisette has many meanings. It is French for hazelnut, but also is used in English to refer to a cut of meat forming a nice round, as a fillet mignon or rolled, tied, and sliced rack of mutton.

More generally, noisette can refer to a size and shape, for example, balls of melon the size of a hazelnut in its shell. Noisette can also refer to a shade of nut brown.

I remember seeing a label for some sort of hazelnut flavored syrup or liquer which showed an image of nuts that were somewhat unfamiliar. They resembled the hazelnut, but were too tall and thin.

Later in my experience of hazelnuts, I ran across a few that were tall and thin, perhaps 1 in 30 or so. Not long after noticing the different shapes, I began to discern a difference in taste. I found that the rare tall and thin hazelnuts tasted better than the average short and round ones.

On a visit to Pike Place Market in Seattle, I came across Holmquist Hazelnuts. I noted that the bags of nuts they had for sale were all of the tall and thin variety!

When I was young, it was a tradition to have a large bowl of mixed nuts in shells as part of the appetizers for our Thanksgiving Dinner. Right around Thanksgiving was the only time we ever used our nutcrackers!

The bowl usually contained almonds, brazil nuts, filberts, pecans, and walnuts, although in later years, the pecans seemed to disappear. The one time I got a rotten pecan probably had nothing to do with it, but that did put me off pecans for many, many years.

Needless to say, my favorite nut in the mix was the filbert!